Little Clipper rebates for many Muni riders

Thousands of Muni riders who used Clipper cards to transfer from BART to Muni got ripped off, but they’ll soon be getting rebates. Small rebates.

Between March and October, Clipper users who transferred from BART to Muni twice within a 24-hour period were overcharged. So were Clipper users who transferred from BART to Muni without using both of the transfers to which they were entitled. Some riders who transferred from BART to Muni at Daly City were also charged for transfers when they shouldn’t have been.

According to John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which oversees Clipper, 14,745 Clipper customers made a total of 37,525 affected transactions, and the value of those over-payments added up to $16,612.

For those without a calculator, or otherwise mathematically challenged, that means an average overcharge of a little more than 44 cents per incident.

The change will be, or has been, refunded to the affected customers automatically. According to a letter to the customers, the value would be placed on their Clipper cards the first time they used them after Nov. 21.

The overcharging was the result of a software glitch installed when the system was upgraded in March. It was discovered in October and fixed with another software upgrade, Goodwin said.

This is not the first incident of Clipper overcharging or undercharging because of software troubles. Goodwin blames the problems on the complexity of the system, which attempts (mostly successfully) to accommodate the differing fare and transfer policies of the eight transit systems that accept the card: BART, Muni, AC Transit, Golden Gate Transit and Ferry, Caltrain, SamTrans and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.

“It’s primarily a function of all the different transit operators and all their different rules,” he said.